Woven

As we wait for Turtle's Tetris bedspread to be quilted, I completed Little Possum's bedspread. She already has a fine collection of small quilts, mainly in pink princess or fairy themes. But as LP has now outgrown her pinkness, she was in the market for something a little more funky and altogether more grown up.

The Simply Woven pattern I found on Moda Bakeshop caught LP's eye, and when I found the Snap Pop range by Sandy Gervais for Moda I knew we had a winner :)  Beautiful bright colours in fun prints perfectly match our lively girl.

The pattern was very easy to follow, but my poor old sewing machine was going on strike. I think it is overdue a service and some TLC, but I battled through with slipping tension and feed-dogs that were not working properly until all the blocks were assembled.

I have started making some noises about getting a new sewing machine that can cope with quilting. My poor old faithful Brother machine was purchased long before I started quilting, when I envisaged simple sewing projects. When I take it in for a service today I will look longingly at the new machines, most probably lingering a little longer by the Janome 1600p QC.....

Woven..... a sneak peek

There's a Little Possum at my house who wants a bedspread

We're well on the way :)

Japanese prints "Gathered in"

Back in 2010 I bought a layer cake of Japanese prints. It was unplanned. I had probably made the trip to the quilt shop to purchase some thread or something small when the layer cake caught my eye and spoke to me. (Actually, it may have been shouting .... "BUY ME! PLEASE!). Ever obedient to the voices, I made the purchase and brought the fabrics home waiting for the perfect project idea or pattern.

As it happened I didn't have to wait long. Down Under Quilts (or is it Quilts Down Under?) published a pattern by Kate Conklin and it was perfect. I decided on a crisp blue/white look, and here is the result:

I shadow quilted the small squares,using light grey thread in the centre panels and red for the border.

I wanted a pieced backing - stashbusting again. I had some blue white striped cotton - almost like ticking, and used that. (Looks a bit odd in the photo, though). 

back for more

I have had a long break from blogging... and also from quilting/sewing. But I started to miss it, so I'm back for more. I declared 2013 to be a year for completing projects - both a long list/big pile of UFO's sitting in my craft room, as well as those projects I have been planning but not quite got around to, like this bag:

This was one of Little Possum's favourite jeans skirts which she would wear with the most colourful tights or leggings and a lot of panache. But she outgrew it. I didn't want to part with it, and thought that the straight design would make it fairly easy to turn into a tote. I boxpleated the base, made a lining and a handle. Hey presto. 3 years in the planning, an hour in the making......

Turtle has been asking for his own bedspread for over year now, but he was very specific about colours (black, orange, green and turquoise) and pattern - he wanted lot of squares in varying sizes, randomly arranged. My muse deserted me, and I couldn't really think of a design that would meet his requirements, until he started playing Tetris, and I thought we could work with that. He agreed to increase the number of colours. 

Here's what we came up with:

It will be quilted soon , not sure about whether to just have it done in a grid pattern, or something more elaborate. I decided that a border would confuse the pattern, so I will just bind it in black without a border.

The back is pieced:

This quilt has sat around waiting for me to bind it, and I finally got around to it:

I'm quite pleased with my gemstones, front and back.